David Hale and a damn fine stoogie...

 

 

Hale with a damn fine stoogie, Dominic's cigar dinner, spring 2000...

Our first cigar we ever smoked together as a group was a Dutch Master Strickler stole from Haddads while bringing his mom a sack lunch to work one afternoon.  The four of us (Hale-VonB-Dan before he was Goth and had long hair and didn’t talk much and Strickler) took off in Dave’s Prunemobile. The Prunemobile was informally acknowledged in finer, erudite Central Illinois circles as ‘the Plumb’-a nineteen seventy-nine T-bone known for its commodious back seat which was more of a futon than a footrest. A car was a purple mound of aged automotive innards flatulently blowing steam and loosing oil. The Plumb was David Von B’s first car and had previously belonged to his Aunt Evelyn in Kewanee. The car smelled like old Lady smell and was missing the switch to the blinker and possessed only one cyclopic headlight-making passenger’s fair game for multifarious pididdle moonings.

 

            As the foursome headed to Pekin—a city where they were sure they would be safe from the parental penumbras and overshadowing adults- the four boys took turns copiously inhaling the dried rolled leaves, trying not to cough in front of each Other. The park chosen to partake in this historic event was nothing less than Lagoon Park. The Lagoon Park resembled exactly a miniature Christmas village. This was the same park where all of four years ago, David Hale and Dave VonB skimmed the shorelines of the Lagoon in a shared paddle boat going more or less in circles. Little Shit Hale then assertively took control of the boat, commandeering it through a fountain much to VonB’s overly self-conscious chagrin.

 

“Dave-no-it’ll fuck up my hair.”

 

Hale (Mad-possessed, determined, demon oriented): “He-he-he. Yes. Water.”

 

“Dave—no!!!!!!”

 

“He-he-he. Yes. Say goodbye.”

 

VonB makes one final futile endeavor to reconnoiter the steering wheel from Little Shit Hale’s tenacious thirteen-year-old grasp, but with no avail whatsoever. Both boys are doused with Liquid. Hale is laughing, almost falling over the side of the paddleboat he is chuckling so hard. Snot shoots out his nose and he laughs harder-holding his hand over his heart. VonB tentatively reaches up to feel his spray-shined sculpture expecting to find it no more, when, he is startled and almost clicks his heels together inside the boat to find it unchanged.

 

“Dave.” An over joyous VonB wails. “My hair-it hasn’t moved at all!” VonB is talking about his set of hair like he went to bed bald last night and thanks to Rogaine; he sprouted a rose garden on the top of his tete.

 

“Duh-Dave.” Little Shit Hale can only say, “Why do you think they call it Aqua Net.” Hale will either shit on you with his derisive observations or astound you with his verbal contributions to the human race.

 

The lagoon has more dead fish floating upside down now than did it four year ago. VonB still generously showers his hair with a can of Aqua Net a week. His hair molded into a sort of plastic unmovable skateboard ramp. A pouting stiff-upper lip resembling a cross between the chicness of Harry Connick, the cageyness of Parker Lewis, and the daffiness of Jerry Seinfield’s next door neighbor.

 

“You know what Dave.” Little Shit Hale rants. “The cool thing about hanging with you is that your hair enters the building almost fifteen minutes before you do.”

 

“……..”

 

As the boys circulate the cigar in a semi-circle as if it were weed, Hale mentions the word velocity and in the same sentence mentions that everything is moving so very fucking fast he wishes it would just slow down for a minute. Both Dave and Dave will be seniors in high school this coming school year. David has just broken up with some girl by the name of Sarah 2E-A last name Strickler always said sounded like it belonged in a Hot flamingo colored Barbie hotel room suite. Serendipitously, VonB got involved with Sarah when he was not-so-aptly cast as a Shark in a summer stock version of West Side Story. Hale and Patrick witness productions of David dipped in thick pancake syrup to give him a Puerto Rican flair.

 

“Dude.” Commented Patrick upon seeing the change in skin pigmentation for one of his Nearest and Dearest. “He looks like a Dilly Bar.”

 

Sarah 2E (and since this was nothing more or less than torrid high school assignation, the author wishes to, if he so may, state that he has since fooled around with at least two and possibly a third (memories the first thing to go when brown liquor is a standard part of any outing) lasses by the name of Sarah-both of whom were much better lays and both of whom did not, like 2E, smell like bathroom disinfectant, Big Red gum and altoids) was the first and last woman VonB would date who could piss the capital ‘P’ in pretension simply by squatting in his car seat as he drove her to Morton after rehearsals. She was arrogant and overweening beyond fuck. And clingy. Calling VonB every night at two in the morning just to tell him that she was sorry that she yelled so acerbically at him but his on-stage voice-she felt-didn’t communicate up to par. Sarah spent all of two minutes on stage and was a pest in the make-up room-monopolizing hours in front of a mirror in nothing but her smelly bra and pink towel. Yikes. Who could then demean VonB too much when, at the second to last cast party, he fell in love with a girl from Ottawa, Illinois by the name of Lisa-Joy (No-Relation) Simpson. Lisa-Joy was model-lish, artistic-not too mention the daughter of a pastor (which Hale likes to remind VonBehren that we all know what that means. He-he). She was also rather beautiful and kissed with her entire face entering David’s. The two snuck off from the party-leaving Sarah alone with something called a Sony Play station where she showed her unattractive ankle bruise to a group of under aged actors with makeup stains sipping Wine Coolers knowing all to well that David had just snuck off into Linda’s van with Lisa where she helped him removed more than just his pancake makeup.

 

Eventually David, as is his one incorrigible character flaw to this day, fell in capital L love with Lisa to the point where he was almost certain that the impetus for his unbidden passion was that capital G god wanted them together. He used his affair with Lisa-Joy to break up with 2E, forwardly addressing her that not only did nearly everyone know about the whole David and Lisa-Joy (N/R) Simpson crazy ass ardor but that they also somewhat encouraged it since Sarah was such a pretentious blonde-haired bitch to the entire cast and company they felt sorry for David for having to put up with her.

 

“So how does it feel to be with two girls in one night?” My sister would later inquire. What David remembers most about Lisa-Joy is how her lavender panties looked like the smeared clouds of a May sunset. How her voice nudged him to stay in the van with her longer. How she told him that he worried too much about Sarah finding out and how she wished him to be ‘concrete’ even though she said that she was in love with all that was abstract an alluring about him. David still possesses the stub of unpaid phone bills of her listening to her voice in an old rotary phone and it raining outside. He has memories (summer ’95) of San Antonio and not being able to sleep at night and leaving the hotel room to walk along what is known in San Antonio as the River Walk-smoking cigarettes he purchased from the vending machine at Hunts family restaurant in Peoria before he left (he is still-for one last week-seventeen) wearing a smoker jackets he found in his Italian Grandfather’s closet up in Chi-town and thanking his 17 year old cosmological ideology of what is higher for his Ottawan princess.

 

“I love you back.” Was what Lisa-Joy told him.